Smoke, Mirrors, and Murder

the phone off the hook so her friends couldn’t get through, apparently not realizing that if she did that, he couldn’t get through either.
    Twice, her courage honed by especially rough beatings, Emily left Terry and ran to friends’ houses. But she stayed away only overnight. He always tracked her down. Predictably, he was full of remorse, and sounded sincerely miserable when he promised to change.
    Things would be different. He pleaded that he needed Emily. If she would only come back to him, he would never hit her again.
    Still, nothing changed. As soon as she was home, the beatings began again. She feared that he really would carry out his threats to murder her, the awful things he voiced when he was in one of his maniacal rages and claimed not to remember later.
    The final straw came with another beating. This time, however, it was not Emily who was the victim; it was her dog. They had been caring for one of Terry’s relatives’ dogs when Emily’s dog crept out on the porch and ate the other dog’s food, a perfectly predictable thing for an animal to do.
    But Terry had rules for animals, too, and this was unforgivable. He beat the helpless dog with a broom handle until Emily’s tears and sobs mingled with the anguished howls of her pet.
    Somehow, she saw Terry’s cruelty and sadism more clearly when she herself wasn’t the victim. With a flash of great clarity, Emily knew she couldn’t stay with him any longer. She waited for her chance, and as soon as he left the house, she gathered a few clothes and her dog and she fled to her girlfriend’s house.
    Emily had managed to put a little extra money in their bank account. She planned to draw it out and head for her own family. Her grandparents and her aunts and uncles lived in Seattle. If she could get that far, she knew they would protect her. Then she could make her way up to Alaska and her parents.
    But Terry was one step ahead of her. When Emily went to the bank to withdraw her half of the savings account, she found he’d put a hold on the account. She had faithfully deposited a hundred dollars out of each of her paychecks. It was her money. The bank teller studied the tense young girl in front of her and made what was perhaps a fatal decision. She told Emily that she couldn’t take her money out without her husband’s permission. “I’ll call him and ask him,” she said with a smile.
    Emily’s face blanched stark white, and she whirled and ran as the woman began to dial a number. She was caught, trapped, and there was no one to help her.
    Her friend could give her shelter, but that was all. And her friends were afraid of Terry, too. They told Emily he was crazy.
    It was only a matter of time before he tracked Emily down.
    And that was exactly what he was doing. He knew that Emily was very close to her grandparents in Seattle, Bill and Florence Borden. He figured they might be a weak link in the protective fence around Emily. He called Florence Borden, who was seventy-five, and told her he had to talk to Emily. He explained that he was in a sanitarium getting treatment for “nerves,” and that he knew he’d recover more rapidly if he could just talk to Emily.
    Florence Borden knew where Emily was, but she didn’t trust Terry. She knew her granddaughter had suffered a great deal at his hands. For almost three weeks, the elderly lady talked daily on the phone with Terry. He pleaded, cajoled, and tried to reassure her that everything was going to be all right.
    “I’m here voluntarily,” he said earnestly. “I signed myself in for treatment. I just want Em to know that I’m doing the right thing, and I want her to know that I love her.
    “The doctors here tell me that my behavior wasn’t my fault—it was caused by some pain pills I was taking for a bad tooth.”
    Florence Borden wasn’t fooled. She knew that Terry had been acting crazy for a year and a half. She reasoned that pain pills prescribed only recently probably hadn’t triggered his violent attacks on Emily.
    Still, as the weeks went by, Terry wore her down. He was so convincing, so contrite. And he seemed to be sincere. At length, Emily’s grandmother gave in, thinking that he really did love Emily, and she told Terry the address where she was hiding.
    That was all he needed.
    Emily returned to her friend’s house that afternoon and her heart stopped when she saw Terry’s Capri parked at the curb. Her girlfriend had tried to convince Terry that Emily wasn’t living